Biography

About me

Hailing from the stony grey soils of Monaghan in Ireland, I discovered my interest in computing at a young age, spending late nights in front of my dads computer with its glaring CRT monitor playing Dungeon Keeper, Hell-Copter, Age of Empires & Test Drive 4.

Once I had saved up enough for my own computer I spent almost every waking hour delving into programs I downloaded from the library or school (the internet is not very common in Monaghan either). This included self training in Photoshop, Maya, Carrara, Softimage MODTOOL, Sketchup, The Source SDK, Visual Studio and XNA.

My interest and passion in programming, art and game design continuously grows and I am always seeking for new ways to reinvent myself to adapt to such a rapidly changing industry.

Interests

I enjoy playing online and offline PC games in a casual or competative environment. Half-Life, Portal, Dota, Battlefield and Farm Simulator are among my favourites.
I participate regularily in Soccer, Athletics, Reading, Fishing, Painting, Tennis and Cycling. I have an interest in computer hardware and tend to build bleeding edge PCs every few years for Gaming, Rendering, Games Development, Overclocking & Benchmarking.

Current Occupation

I am currently working remotely as a consultant for Automotive UI Projects as a Technical Artist and Optimizations Engineer to improve the performance and useability which is critical for Infotainment and Cluster implementations seen in modern vehicles.

As a Technical Artist my tasks include,

Turning designs into usable Realtime Assets

Creating clean 3D geometry which can be animated

Animating features based on specifications

Scripting Elements to react based on events

Programming complex Shaders in GLSL to achieve affects that would otherwise require pre-rendering

Optimization of multiple assets using clever techniques and new software features

Creation of Programs and Scripts to automate tasks (This included Photoshop Scripting through JS & VBS as well as C# Winforms)

Past

Byton

My latest exciting venture was working as a C# Developer and Technical Artist with the team that developed the prototype Infotainment system for the new Electric Vehicle Startup Byton.

Our focus was to develop a user experience for CES 2018 showcasing the Bytons features throughout the vehicle on all 4 displays, where the user interacts via touch and gestures.

Karma Revero

I was employed to work remotely on the reincarnation of one of the original hybrid vehicles known as the Fisker. The new vehicle aptly renamed to the Karma Revero is a hybrid luxury sports car which was released in 2017.

As a Technical Artist my task was to improve performance, develop new features and improve stability on both the infotainment Unit and the Cluster.

Audi Infotainment & Cluster

As a senior 3D Technical Artist for e.solutions GmbH in Erlangen, Germany I was priviledged to have worked on their infotainment systems which is found in both Audi & Porsche’s latest range of cars.

The software I worked on replaces the hardware based intrusment clusters which can be seen in Audi’s latest TT, R8, Q7, A4 & A3 as well as the complete Porsche range of cars.
The following article reviews the pilot project, the TT3 further.

Skills

Programming

C++ (DirectX, OpenGL, CryEngine, UE4, Half-Life SDK, Source SDK)

C# (Winforms, XNA, Kinect SDK, Unity)

Java (J2SE, J2ME, Android)

Flash (Actionscript 2 & 3)

Javascript (Photoshop & NodeJS)

Scripting

VBS

Visual Scripting: UE4 Blueprints, CryEngine FlowGraph

LUA

Python

Torque Script

Embedded UI Development

Unity 3D & Rightware Kanzi

OpenGLES, WebGL & Vulkan

GLSL & CG (ShaderLab)

Hyper Optimization

Animation

Ability to turn a design into a working Prototype within a limited time frame